


Lonely, Lonely World

by sarahmonious



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Coda, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Tony, Panic Attacks, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 18:36:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14775009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahmonious/pseuds/sarahmonious
Summary: Set immediately after Avengers: Infinity War on Titan. Reality sets in. Both Tony and Nebula are barely hanging on by a thread.





	Lonely, Lonely World

The air has a metallic tinge on his tongue.

Reminds him a bit of working in his shop, if he’s being honest. Like soldering fumes and ozone.

Who knows; maybe each breath he takes in, it shrivels the alveoli in his lungs, or causes tumors to blossom on his organs. This isn’t _air_ , it can’t be _air_ , not nitrogen and oxygen and argon and whatnot all perfectly mixed together; he’s on an alien planet.

His helmet is gone. Shattered. Just as well. Friday was… miles away. A lot of miles away. Unable to give him an atmospheric readout on the _alien planet_.

He wonders if he breathes in the dust of his friends and acquaintances, their bones and skin, when he takes a breath. Probably maybe yes. There were seven of them. Now there’s just two.

Speaking of. He can feel her presence somewhere vaguely behind him. The thought of playing nice and working together with yet another new person ( _alien_ ) is quite honestly the last thing on a long list of things he wants to do right now.

Lying down on the ground and never getting up again sounds like the winner in this scenario.

He doesn’t know how much time passes. Hours. Months.

Finally she shifts behind him. Boots scuff on the rock.

“Let’s find a ship.”

A ship. Like the alien ship they crash-landed on an alien planet. That kind of ship.

The never-getting-up-again scenario still sounds way better.

“It’ll be a walk,” she says, sounding like she’s speaking behind clenched teeth. “So we need to get going.”

Fine.

“Fine.” His voice cracks, echoing through the canyon.

He shifts, just a little, and it ignites a fire on his torso. Right. Stabbed.

He huffs three quick breaths, one-two-three (another tumor pops out of his liver, definitely) and tries to stand in one go.

There’s a split second realization that he’s on his way back down on his ass, and then he sees a blue hand around his waist.

They’re stuck in the moment, the gathering momentum before the pendulum swing. Silence, except for his own labored gasps. He doesn’t say anything. Any reason to was turned to ash and blown away. Insignificant.

They shuffle forward, Tony slowly gaining footing as they go. Her arm disappears from his waist soon enough. His side still hurts like a bitch despite the nanotech suturing him up.

She walks with determination, eyes not searching the horizon or checking the busted hulls and rusted carcasses they pass. Like she’s been here before.

“You-you get Google Maps out here?” His throat is as dry as the dusty ground. She looks back at him and squints, silent.

“How do you know where we’re going?” he tries again.

She stares at him a hair-raising moment longer, her black eyes unsettling what little thought process he had. She turns forward again, muscles taut and strides purposeful, but not before he hears her mutter, “This place used to be my prison.”

Right. Of course. Everything else is twelve kinds of fucked, so that falls in line.

They trudge along. Tony tries his best to keep up, putting pressure with his palm on the stab wound and breathing evenly through his nose. He scans the horizon, taking time to look at the bizarre structures of Titan and how they tower over the desolate landscape. No movement anywhere, not even the stirring of dust (surely wind must exist here, because if he can breath the air, then there’s an atmosphere), just… nothing. Empty. Quiet.

Dry.

He’s absolutely parched. Has tried to ignore it, but that battle wasn’t exactly a Sunday morning yoga session. He’s willing to bet there’s no potable water within a couple million miles of their location. He probably should feel hungry too, but he deeply buries that thought right next to the other thousand things he doesn’t want to think about. But wow, yeah, a big ass tall glass of icy water would do the trick. That would go down real smooth. He’d had a bottle at the park, shared it with Pepper, but –

Pepper.

The clang of his suit’s knees hitting rock echoes around the canyon, but that’s insignificant. He retches so hard that tears stream down his face and the stab wound ignites like he’s been stuck again, but that’s insignificant too.

If over half the team here had disappeared like they had never existed, it was obvious the same would have happened around the galaxy. On Earth. In New York City.

He doesn’t want to go back. Death on this alien planet is better than knowing. Anything is better than knowing.

He’s being pushed, his shoulders maneuvered so his face is moved away from his own sick.

“—together,” he hears. “We have to _go_. Just keep it together. For a little while longer.” She doesn’t sound cruel. He knows that tone; is intimately familiar with it. Desperation.

But the dam had shattered. Thoughts erupt like a rapid chain reaction. Rhodey. Bruce. Happy. Natasha. When Tony had broken into the ship before it left Earth, he had (eventually, finally) made peace with the fact that this was a suicide mission. It was so much easier when he’d been the one to make that call, been in control of that decision.

But this? This was his waking nightmare. This was _the_ waking nightmare.

He’s gasping for breath, fingers clenching in the dusty rocks. And then – small hands grasp his face, forcing him to look directly at her.

“We need. To keep moving,” she says. “There is nothing we can do here. I—” She makes a frantic, angry noise. “I refuse to stay here a second longer. I can’t.”

A directive. A challenge, with tasks. Something he can focus on.

Tony presses the heels of his palms in his eye sockets, starbursts shooting in the black. Allows himself ten more seconds of pure panic.

He stands. He’s shaking, teeth chattering, shock symptoms for sure. But – he stands.

He follows her lead.

They walk. Endlessly, it feels like. It almost reminds him of when he had escaped that cave in Afghanistan all those years ago. Except then, his mind was abuzz with _home, escape, Pepper, hot, shelter, escape_. Now he keeps his mind very, very purposefully blank.

His understanding of time and direction and existence itself seems broken, but that was okay, because at least one of them knew where they were going. So when they finally happen upon what looks like a large docking bay for more of those donut ships, he has to blink a few times to make sure all this isn’t some incredibly horrific dream.

“This way,” his companion calls to him as he stands there stupidly, looking up at the ship.

He watches as she finds a holoscreen near the base of the ship, and after a few deft moves with her fingers, they’re graced with the metallic whine of a door and a ramp extending to the ground.

She looks back toward him, waiting for him to make the first move.

So he boards, stepping foot off the planet where his companions… _friends_ … ceased to exist.

The cockpit area looks the same as the ship they came in on. She seems to know what she’s doing, so Tony steps back and lets her work. The engines power on, and the holoscreen HUD comes to life.

“Where are we headed?” he asks. Maybe she’ll swing by a planet completely made of volcanoes; drop him right in a crater.

“I pulled the location coordinates from the last ship that landed here—your ship.” The metal around them groans as ship shifts, preparing for takeoff. Her fingers fly, her focus solely on getting them off the ground. “I’m dropping you off on your planet. And then I have to find… I have business to take care of.”

Her sister’s body. He’d forgotten.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

She doesn’t say anything for a few long moments. Then finally, without looking back at him: “Nebula.”

“Nebula. Nice to meet you. I’m Tony.” Nothing about the past 72 hours was nice, and they both knew it.

They lifted up and blasted out of the planet’s atmosphere before Tony could barely blink. The planet quickly grew distant in their rearview.

It had taken about 30 hours, door to door, on their journey to Titan (back when his team was still alive and not disintegrated on some planet, _no, no no, done thinking about that, please_ ), so he assumes the same on the return.

What to do for 30 hours that wasn’t blasting a hole in the ship and going the way of Squidward.

He pulls up a seat on the cold, metal floor, close enough to Nebula, but still out of her way. He tries to close his eyes, but the world tilts like his first time drinking half a bottle of cheap vodka.

He thinks. He thinks about what an absolutely fucking mess the Earth will be in when he gets back. Chaos. Terror. That grotesque _Left Behind_ series come to life. Maybe Kirk Cameron had dissolved into nothing. The thought gives him a fleeting moment of happiness.

Who would have thought. All those years ago, they had fought so hard to defend the Earth from aliens. And then all his… issues. And for what? _For what_?

He lets out a sharp noise; maybe a laugh, more likely a sob. Nebula whips her head to his direction.

“What,” is all she says.

He shakes his head, but the words spill out anyway. “Just, you know, just thinking about how _aliens_ , some kind of aliens, came to my planet a couple years ago, and we got beat pretty bad, but we whooped their asses anyway, destroyed their mothership or whatever, and I was dealing with it. Kind of, kind of dealing with it, wasn’t for a few years there, but I was getting there, getting better. And now. And now.” He closes his eyes again, wills them to stay shut. “Goddammit all,” he says quietly.

Things are silent for a while as the ship hurtles through space. He’s depleted. Wonders if she can punch him in the face just so he can be unconscious for a while.

So he gives a start when he sees her standing above him, staring.

And then he watches as she moves to his right, sliding down to park next to him.

They don’t touch. Nothing is said. But some small kernel of comfort manifests anyway. He closes his eyes again and hopes she feels the same.

 


End file.
